Reader feedback 8.20.03

Council priorities

It's business (actually funny business) as usual for the
Rochester City Council.

After
pleading poverty as the excuse for declining to spend a few measly thousands to
keep several acres of Pinnacle Hill woods out of the hands of potential
developers, the Council has now miraculously found that it can afford to plunk
down 100 grand of our tax dollars to hire a bunch of lawyers to defend their
hissy-fit attempt to deny city school employees the right to serve as Council
members.

How
sad that our elected officials view their vendetta against Tim Mains as more
important than preserving the city's green space for future generations.

Michael J. Nighan, Rochester

Bring on the heat

As a reader of your newspaper, I feel the need to discuss my
disappointment with most of your articles. It seems Rochester is behind in the
times, or even scarier, perhaps afraid to go near the edge of writing something
remotely close to interesting.

I
have yet to read something that pisses me off, makes me think, or makes me
realize even further that most human beings are shallow, empty-headed idiots.
This, my City Newspaper friends,
makes for a damn good read.

The
local band-schedules-restaurant-review sections are wonderful and all, but it
doesn't make me want to run to the newsstand every week.

I'm
under the assumption that you have writers on your staff. I have found that
most writers have something to say, something worth writing about. Why do you
not allow these talents to shine through? I want to hear the anger, the rants,
the sarcasm, and the frustration of a lone writer drinking his seventh whiskey
and smoking his last Camel as he writes his internal fire on paper. What is
writing without fire?

I am
going to make another assumption here and say I think you are trying to reach a
younger reading audience. Why else would your circulation be in urban
neighborhoods, bars, and corners where our very own pierced, tattooed, and
smoked-up Rochesterians hang out? Maybe I have it all wrong in what your
newspaper is trying to produce, but if I had the audience, the resources, and a
valuable opinion to voice.... goddammit,

I would use it. Often.

Give
us 20-30-somethings some credit here. We can take the heat; we can think; the
real question is: Will your newspaper ever bring it?

Amy Restivo, Dartmouth Street, Rochester

Editor Mary Anna Towler's response: Thanks
for your comments --- and I agree with you that journalism ought to be
interesting, and to have fire when it's appropriate. I disagree with one of
your assumptions, though: I'd rather have writers who are in control of their
faculties when they're trying to analyze public policy, quote news sources
accurately, and write clearly. I'm not sure how much trust I could place in
writers whose work is done when they're on their seventh whiskey. This is
journalism, not fiction. It doesn't have to be boring, but it's tough work, and
readers deserve competence as well as flair.

Inspired by Williams

My heartfelt thanks for Ron Netsky's excellent article on
John A. Williams. As a young man, I always anticipated finding the next
Williams book, but I lose track of him after Jacob's Ladder. How
wonderful to learn that he's still writing, and I can't express how excited I
am to learn of Clifford's Blues.

I
attended the inspiring UR exhibit, and I was very moved by the obvious respect
shown to this great artist. This is something you don't normally see in
Rochester.

My
thanks go out to the UR staff as well. Please continue with more of the same.

Ronnie
Ronson, De George Circle, Greece

Power points

In June, RG&E's parent company, Energy East Corp.,
reaffirmed its plans to sell the Ginna nuclear-power plant. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission is accepting public comments through September 16
regarding relicensing the 30-year-old plant. This is a great time for the
ratepayers to find out how this will affect them and their economy.

Ginna
is slated to close in 2009 under its 40-year federal operating license. In
addition to getting a 20-year extension on the license from the NRC, to attract
a buyer, Energy East may need to replace the head of Ginna's reactor vessel.
That major maintenance outage could easily cost over $200 million for parts,
labor, and replacement power during the long shutdown. RG&E will most
likely not recoup that amount in the sale, and the ratepayers will make up the
difference.

A
March 30 Democrat and Chronicle article
noted that the high cost of energy is one of the main forces driving businesses
out of Upstate New York. Businesses here pay up to three times more for energy than
competitors in other areas of the country.

The
same article reported that there are plans to create enough wind power in New
York State to generate more electricity than Ginna does within a few years.
Since Upstate New York generates about 50 percent more power than we use, which
is 11 times more energy than Ginna can generate, closing the plant would be
insignificant.

RG&E
and the PSC say that a sale would bring competition and benefit to ratepayers.
The truth is much different. Since New York's other reactors have been sold,
electric rates have gone up and workers have lost their jobs.

It's
time for Upstate New Yorkers as a community to come together and demand an end
to the corporate greed that will do nothing but feed our spiraling economy.
Contact the Public Service Commission and your local representatives and let
them know that this sale is not in the best interest of the region and that
cleaner and cheaper alternatives will provide a better future.

Syd Southworth, Syracuse (Southworth is
a native of Rochester and is a member of the Central New York Citizens
Awareness Network)

The tax-free life

Remember Leona Helmsley? Ten or fifteen years ago she became
notorious for saying, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay
taxes." She was immensely wealthy, owning hotels and real estate in
Manhattan, and thought that paying taxes was beneath her social position. But
the IRS caught up with her, and she was sentenced to 18 months for mail fraud
and tax evasion.

Her
sentiments outraged the public and were condemned as selfish, antisocial, and
elitist. Whoever imagined that her sentiments would become the policies of the
Bush administration?

Immediately
upon taking office in January 2001, Mr. Bush proposed to eliminate the estate
tax. In June, Mr. Bush signed into law a bill to phase out the estate tax,
which applies only to estates worth millions or billions of dollars. Immense
and growing aggregations of capital will pass from generation to generation
untouched by the estate tax, as the very rich get very richer, merely by
holding on to their property.

By
2002, the effect of the tax cuts of 2001 (and of other factors) threw the US
budget into deficit, and in July Mr. Bush signed a bill to raise the limit on
the national debt in order to authorize further borrowing.

Ignoring
the rising deficit, in January 2003 Mr. Bush proposed to eliminate the personal
income tax on most stock dividends. In May he signed into law a bill to
terminate the income tax on most stock dividends and the capital gains tax in
2008 (along with other tax cuts). Most stock is owned by, and most dividends
are paid to, the very rich. Thus, the income obtained by buying, holding, and
selling stocks will be tax-free. In tax parlance, this is called unearned
income.

Obviously,
abolishing the estate tax, eliminating the tax on dividends, and eliminating
the capital gains tax will cause huge reductions in the revenues of the federal
government. The wealthiest citizens, who have benefited the most from American
society and American capitalism, will be charged little or nothing to pay for
the society which enables them to prosper.

Who
will be charged for the expenses necessary "to establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity"? The people who work for a living will still be paying taxes.
They are the employees and small-business people who manufacture the products,
provide the services, and staff the institutions of society. Their wages are
called earned income.

The
policy of the Bush administration is to abolish taxes on unearned income and
maintain taxes on earned income. Just as Leona said, only the little people
will pay taxes.

Paul D. Van Ness, Rugby Avenue, Rochester

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